Funding profile · Environmental remediation biotech

BluumBio

Seven financing events, seventeen listed investors, five patent families, and no Form D. Almost nothing about the size of BluumBio’s private capital is on any public record. One federal grant is.

$188,466Sole federal award on record, NIH SBIR Phase I
$125KDisclosed private funding, 4 rounds, per Tracxn
0Form D notices filed with the SEC, in any year
17Investors listed by PitchBook, no named lead

Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported and data-provider figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Jan 2021 University spin-out Not disclosed From work at UC Berkeley PitchBook
Sep 2021 Y Combinator, Summer 2021 batch Not disclosed Y Combinator Tracxn, YC
Dec 2021 to Jan 2022 Seed Not disclosed Not named; angel investor Ethan Perlstein listed PitchBook, Tracxn
Oct 2024 Accelerator: Founders Factory and Rio Tinto Mining Tech Accelerator, first cohort Seed capital, per-company amount not disclosed Founders Factory, Rio Tinto Independent
May 2025 Seed round Not disclosed EQT Foundation joined; PitchBook also lists Nettle Ventures and Asymmetry Ventures Investor release
Jul 2025 Federal grant $188,466 NIH, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Public record

What the filings show

SEC EDGAR · no Form D of any kind

Full-text search
Phrase BluumBio, all forms: 0 hits
Form D only
0 hits
Company search
No registrant matching bluum
Effect
No offering amount, sold amount, investor count, related persons or board composition on the securities record
Queried
SEC EDGAR, September 23, 2026

NIH NIEHS · SBIR Phase I R43ES037574 · awarded Jul 18, 2025

Amount
$188,466
Period
Jul 18, 2025 to Jun 30, 2026
Recipient
BLUUMBIO INC
Programme
Superfund Research Program, activity code R43
Project leader
Katherine French
Scope
Formulation and laboratory treatability studies for two PFAS-degrading soil microbes
Record
NIH RePORTER and USAspending, appl ID 11183409

WIPO and USPTO · 5 published applications, applicant BluumBio, Inc.

Oil enzymes
US 2024/0352431, WO 2024/220320, AU 2024257176, priority Apr 2023
PFAS enzymes
US 2025/0065383, priority Aug 2023; WO 2026/161785, published Jul 2026
Inventors
Katherine French on four; Jordan Baker on the Australian filing
Status
All pending. No granted patent found
Record
WIPO PATENTSCOPE applicant search, September 23, 2026

Reading the filings

  1. The securities record is empty, and that is a choice, not an anomaly.Zero Form D notices across five years and at least four private financings. Companies that raise under Section 4(a)(2) rather than Regulation D file no Form D at all, so the absence does not mean no money moved. It does mean no round size, investor count or board seat has ever reached a federal filing.
  2. The disclosed total is far too small to be the real total.Tracxn puts lifetime disclosed funding at $125,000 across four rounds, while PitchBook counts seven financing events and seventeen investors. No company prosecutes five patent families in three jurisdictions, runs a Berkeley wet lab and pays four to six people on $125,000. The figure measures disclosure, not capital.
  3. The only auditable number is the federal one, and it is larger than the disclosed private total.$188,466 from NIH against $125,000 disclosed privately: the grant is about 1.5 times the entire published private figure. That inversion says how little has been announced, not where the money came from.
  4. The grant round in the data providers is the SBIR.Tracxn dates a Grant, prize money round to Jul 17, 2025. The NIH award start date is Jul 18, 2025. One day apart, which makes the fourth round a federal research award rather than a prize or a competition win.
  5. Corporate money arrived before the venture money.Founders Factory and Rio Tinto selected BluumBio in October 2024; EQT Foundation announced in May 2025, seven months later. Rio Tinto committed A$14.4 million, about US$9.7 million, over three years across roughly twelve startups a year, so a first-cohort cheque is a thin slice of it. The value there was access and field sites, not the amount.
  6. The two data providers do not agree on the cap table.Tracxn counts twelve investors and names Y Combinator plus angel Ethan Perlstein. PitchBook counts seventeen and names EQT Foundation, Nettle Ventures, Founders Factory, Rio Tinto and Asymmetry Ventures. Neither names a lead or a round size. Both are compilations, not filings.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Product line One of four products purchasable. Bluum Helios ships for petroleum hydrocarbons. Bluum Delta (PFAS), Bluum Firefly (PCBs) and Bluum Maris (plastics) are each listed as product coming soon. Company-stated
Customers Paid pilots described as underway. No customer named. Investor-stated
Route to market Subcontractor to engineering firms such as AECOM and ERM, which hold the client relationship and the regulatory reporting. Company-stated
Recurring revenue Bluum Better Customer Care plan: sampling kit, laboratory analysis and application scheduling, free for one month then an annual subscription. No price published. Company-stated
Corporate channel Rio Tinto accelerator gives access to mine sites, testing grounds and the prospect of a first customer. No contract announced. Independent
Intellectual property Five published applications, none granted. Earliest priority Apr 2023. Public record
Regulatory No USDA APHIS permit or notification and no EPA TSCA microbial submission naming the company was found, consistent with a non-engineered shipping product. Not found
Competitive set Allonnia launched from Ginkgo Bioworks in 2020 with $40 million. Aclarity raised a $16 million Series A in 2023. Both are better capitalised on the public record. Independent

What to watch

  • A first Form D, or any announced round size. Either would be the first hard capital number produced.
  • An SBIR Phase II for R43ES037574. Phase I ended June 30, 2026, and Phase II awards run several times larger.
  • A named paying customer, or a Rio Tinto site contract.
  • A first granted patent from the 2023 priority filings.
  • Whether the PFAS product leaves the lab for a field trial.

The BluumBio story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

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  • Persist AI: Shared investor: Asymmetry Ventures. A robotic laboratory in West Sacramento that builds and tests long acting injectable formulations by the hundred, rented to drug companies through a web browser
  • Excepgen: Shared investor: Oxonian Ventures. A San Francisco biotech that started by engineering human cells to make hard to express proteins for drug discovery, and has since turned to a different problem
  • Genomelink: Shared investor: Asymmetry Ventures. A Berkeley and Tokyo company that takes the DNA file you already bought from somebody else and returns hundreds of trait reports

Sources

  1. Public recordSEC EDGAR full-text search, BluumBioSEC · queried Sep 23, 2026
  2. Public recordUSAspending award search, BluumBioUSAspending.gov · queried Sep 23, 2026
  3. Public recordNIH RePORTER and NIEHS Superfund Research Program, R43ES037574NIH NIEHS · awarded Jul 18, 2025
  4. Public recordWIPO PATENTSCOPE applicant search, 5 resultsWIPO · queried Sep 23, 2026
  5. IndependentBluumBio funding rounds and list of investorsTracxn · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  6. IndependentBluumBio company profile and patent activityPitchBook · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  7. IndependentRio Tinto backs six mining tech startupsMetal Tech News · Oct 16, 2024
  8. IndependentAllonnia launches to destroy pollution with microbesChemical & Engineering News · Oct 29, 2020
  9. IndependentAclarity secures $16M in Series A fundingPR Newswire · Nov 2, 2023
  10. InvestorEQT Foundation invests in BluumBioEQT · May 22, 2025
  11. CompanyBluumBio product and store pages, Bluum Helios, Delta, Firefly and Marisbluumbio.com · accessed Sep 23, 2026

Compiled from SEC, NIH, USAspending, WIPO and USPTO public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. No Form D notice has been filed by or for this company, so no Regulation D offering amounts exist to report. Tracxn and PitchBook figures are compiled estimates of disclosed amounts, not filings. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in BluumBio. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.